Glamour magazine dumps ‘Jake’
By Heidi Stevens
Chicago Tribune
You go, Glamour.
After 60 years, the magazine is finally dumping Jake, the anonymous male advice columnist whose monthly “What Men Think” installment felt hopelessly retrograde in an otherwise pretty progressive women’s magazine.
I’m a longtime Glamour subscriber, and Jake always struck me as an odd fit. Like that recliner you’ve been hauling around since college and trying to seamlessly blend with your grown-up furniture. It matches, right? No, it doesn’t.
From “Jake on the Strange Little Things Men Find Irresistible”: “Can quote ’The Graduate.’ Intellectual + a hint of existential despair totally sexy!” “Ignores us to concentrate on something. You can be reading, fixing the AC, whatever. That ‘I’m busy!’ face is irresistible.” “Eats burgers, preferably messy ones. It’s a cliche, but to us it means you’re not afraid to get a little dirty, which you see where I am going with this.”
From “Jake Explains: The Real Questions His Friends Ask About You”: “When I was younger, my guy friends would ask stupid questions about anyone I started dating, and they usually focused on her breasts. Fortunately, most guys grow out of that phase (the gossiping-about-breasts phase, anyway; we remain big fans of their existence).”
Jake on what men are thinking after the first date. Jake on how to make your hookup into more. Jake on his four best sexual experiences ever.
Male perspective galore
It’s not that I don’t care. (OK, it’s mostly that I don’t care.) But it’s also that if I did care, I could find that information from one of the roughly 67 zillion other places the male perspective (and the male gaze) is offered.
As Elisabeth Egan explains in the editor’s note announcing the end of Jake’s run: “I – and my fellow Glamour editors – have to admit the concept of a faceless male advice columnist suddenly seems as dated as tanning oil and the cassette tape.”
“It’s not that we don’t want to understand men,” Egan writes. “It’s that men are no longer ‘other.’ They’re in our tribes; we play and work alongside them. We want our men to have names and own their opinions.”
It’s also, speaking as a reader, that we’d prefer to hear their opinions about things other than how we can be more attractive to them.
Neel Shah, who is revealed as the magazine’s most recent Jake in the editor’s note, had this to say about the break-up: “At first I assumed I’d done something terrible. Then I realized, I’m one guy – I can’t speak for every male out there.”
That, too.
The current issue also features an essay from President Barack Obama called, “This is what a feminist looks like.” He reflects on his eight years in office and how he’s watched society’s expectations for women evolve in his lifetime.
“The good news is that everywhere I go across the country, and around the world, I see people pushing back against dated assumptions about gender roles,” he writes. “You’re helping all of us understand that forcing people to adhere to outmoded, rigid notions of identity isn’t good for anybody – men, women, gay, straight, transgender or otherwise. These stereotypes limit our ability to simply be ourselves.”
By dumping Jake, Glamour did its part to push back against those dated assumptions and outmoded, rigid notions.
I’d love to see Jake’s old space filled with a variety of voices – male, female, young, old, gay, straight. And I’d love for those voices to offer rich, layered perspectives on things I wouldn’t find in, say, Maxim.
Congratulations on your newfound freedom, Glamour. And a word of advice: It’s 2016. Don’t settle.
Heidi Stevens is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.